Sweet Freedom

I had a nightmare this morning, sometime after 8, but before 11:30 when I got up (yay!) that I was doing a practice question and got it wrong and was like "Ugh, I can't ever remember that. I've got to get up and really memorize it." But then I woke up a little and was like "Oh no, wait! It's over! F* the right answer! Haha!" I then put it out of my mind to the point that I can't even remember what subject it involved.

We had an enjoyable excursion to the Casino - meaning I escaped before I lost all my money. I had an excellent winning streak on Friday night and Saturday morning, and an abominable losing streak after that, so it wasn't that hard to leave. Although you've always got that feeling like Just One More Chip. Luckily I'm poor, so when I'm done, I'm done. Due to the aforementioned winning streak though, I was up $200 overall when we snuck home, which was just enough to pay off the hotel and buy half a tank of gas.

That's the last time I'll be breaking even on anything for a long time unless I can find a freaking job. Blehhh. I know I said I was going to start my job search for real today, but I didn't realize it was still going to be July today. I'm starting tomorrow. No, for real.

How to Fill the Day

I've got so much free time now I almost don't know what to do. Things I plan to do today:

1. take a shower without resenting the fact that i'll have to do it again tomorrow
2. go to the pharmacy to pick up the medication that ran out three days ago
3. pack for my trip to the Indian Casino
4. watch HGTV for as long as I want
5. drive to the Indian Casino
6. eat yummy food that I did not boil in a bag
7. drink many drinks (or, like, 2)
8. give over my life savings to the roulette wheel

Let's compare that to this time last week:

1. panic
2. 40 MBE questions
3. review Torts
4. Torts essays
5. eat can of soup
6. review Corporations
7. Corporations essays
8. panic
9. review Partnership
10. Partnership essays
11. eat bowl of burned rice
12. 40 MBE questions
13. panic

Hip Hip Huzzah!

Omigod I was so happy when it ended I started crying. I am SO HAPPY!!!

Boyfriend is bringing home lobster and I am going to get DRUNK (no more voluntary intoxication!) off of two glasses of wine and go to bed at 9pm! Woohoo!!

More later, but for now, the essays we had, in order:

1. Con Law (eminent domain, just like my vision!)
2. Property
3. Wills/Trusts
4. Contracts
5. Crim Pro/Crim Law
6. Mass Civ Pro
7. Torts/93A
8. Domestic Relations (3 daddies, no mommy - who gets which kid?)
9. UCC
10. Prof Resp

My favorite part was in the Prof Resp essay where I forbade a lawyer to reveal that his client's baby shampoo did, in fact, sting babies' eyes. I said it wasn't serious bodily harm, even in aggregate. The law is so cruel =)

A Heartfelt F* You to the NCBEX

First of all, for those of you, who I presume to be in the vast majority, who scratched their head this afternoon thinking "just what the f* is Dumpor's Rule and why the f* didn't anyone tell me about it," here it is:

Rule in Dumpor's case: Where LL agrees to one assignment, he is held to have agreed to subsequent assignments unless he specifically reserves his right to forbid them. (Does not apply to subleases; is abolished in most jurisdictions.)

So yes, that is something we learned about, it's just that they're calling it something we've never heard of before. That's totally fair. It's like potayto/potahto, or first degree murder of the NCBEX and their families/justifiable homicide.

Second, why is it that nobody told me that there was a 7th category of questions, namely on Civ Pro, on this dirty bitch? Why did BarBri never say "gosh guys, you should really buckle down and learn what it means to move for directed verdict/summary judgment/dismissal, because they're going to ask you 5-10 questions that requires you to know that stuff."

And don't tell me I should have learned that for the essays. I know I should have, but I didn't.

And finally, thank you so much to the MBTA, which knew that I was going to be in a delicate state of mind this afternoon and went out of its way not to shock me with efficiency. Thank you for making sure there were no Silver line buses for the longest time, then three all together, two of which were completely empty. Thank you for the festive smell in the dank underground tunnel between the Red and Orange lines at Downtown Crossing. And in particular, thank you for allowing me to squeeze myself onto a preposterously overcrowded Orange line train towards home, then stopping one stop before my stop and announcing that the train was going express to the end of the line. My favorite part was that almost literally every single person on the train got off, because no one ever goes to the end of the line. There was like, one guy left on the car I got out of and I think he was either passed out drunk or dead. But never fear, you had a fully packed train right behind it for us to elbow and claw our way onto (sorry to that family of four I knocked under the train) to go one more stop. Because we were all just going one more stop.

Doom!

Gimme an M! Gimme an B! Gimme an E! What's that spell!?!

Hyperventilation

Omigod omigod I take it all back! I'm so scared! This sucks! I did a bunch of MBE questions to try to alert my brain of things to come and I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!!! I don't know what I did for the last 2 months, but it certainly wasn't any of the right stuff! I don't know the difference among any of the defamation torts and I have only ever gotten 1 advanced crim law question right and that was by accident! Agggggggh!!!

But, I mean, it's cool, because it's not like I have to worry about getting fired when I fail, since I am completely Jobless. Just FYI, this is going to turn into the I Hate the Legal Job Market blog in a couple of days (likely with a brief return to hating the bar exam next January/February when I have to retake.)

Zen

I do not wish to discuss That Which We Must Not Mention.

I know that it starts tomorrow, but that does not mean we must discuss it.

I am in my happy place and nothing can hurt me here.

I will spend the day leisurely perusing Things I Already Know That I Know to boost my confidence.

I will also shamelessly attempt to gain karma points (the use of which has been explained in comment to another post) by donating to my two favorite charities.

The benevolent deities will not mind that the donations are very small, since they know that I am both unemployed and unemployable.

I will leave you with two parables, that came to me in the form of dreams last night:

In the first, I decided to take some summer classes at another law school. I showed up to my remedial Con Law class and found out it would be in a swimming pool. A swimming pool full of sharks. I am terrified of sharks (as a result of my grandparents letting me con them into renting Jaws for me at an early age). The professor stood on the side of the tank barking questions at us. It was not unlike my 1L class. But I didn't drown. And I knew the answers. And I climbed out of the tank at the end (alone, but hey...)

In the second, I was on my way to an assassin's convention. It was on a luxury ferry of some kind and I wasn't actually an assassin, I was just assigned to sit in that room with them. Ticketing error. Anyway, they're all sitting around talking things over, and they start to die one by one. So obviously someone in the room is picking them off. It gets down to me and these two guys. One of them is trying to get me to turn the handle on this door and the other one is trying to sneak up behind me. I notice I have a little vial of spray in my hand and two tiny cartoon erasers. Then I realize that it was me that was killing everyone and the little erasers are my calling card. Total suprise ending. So I spray them both in the face and go home.

And so from this we learn that if we can swim with the sharks and outwit the assassins, perhaps tomorrow will not kill us after all.

Bzzzz

I'm vibrating with terror. Literally vibrating. I have been since the middle of yesterday. This is not good.

Too Little Too Late

I couldn't sleep at all last night for the second night in a row. I'm not liking my chances to wake up all chipper and alert at 6am on Wednesday.

I got a voicemail at 8am this morning from the one and only other person I know who's taking the Mass bar - that's fully 3 hours before I even dragged myself out of bed. She thanked me for the fabulous study advice I gave her and says she's feeling pretty good about the essays now. I have to call her back and find out what BS advice I gave her exactly so I can start doing it too. Although it's probably too late now :(

In other news, could someone who is not taking the bar please do something for me: I want to know if Miss USA actually wore the dress Kayne designed for her on Project Runway in the Miss Universe pageant last night. A cursory googling turned up nothing. I really want to know, for no particular reason, but I really, really have to study. Someone please find out and tell me! Your reward will be 5 good karma points for when you take the bar. 5 bonus points if you can link to a picture.

My Pencil Could Kick Your Pencil's Butt

Just returned from buying flashcards. They had these Black Warrior pencils that I felt compelled to buy. They're going to be awesome bar exam pencils. People will glance over and be like "Good god, that girl has awesome pencils! Why are my pencils so inferior? It must be because she's smarter than me! Oh god! I'm going to fail! Why am I still here! I'm leaving right now! Agghh!!!"

Or, like, whatever.

Bad Decision Making

Agh! I knew something was wrong when the studying yesterday went so smoothly! I finished my whole studying To Do list, which is unheard of for me. I was feeling great. Then I went to bed, lay down, and had a total nervous breakdown. I lay awake until about 3am when I decided to take a NyQuil to help me sleep. And it did, although I had nightmares that I was reading my flashcards all night. I prefer to think that was just my brains way of neatly arranging them in my mental filing cabinets where I can speedily access them on exam day.

Then my alarm went off at 8am. And I could not wake up. But I couldn't go back to sleep either. I lay there from 8am - 11:30 thinking "just five more minutes and I'll feel better." But no. I still can't wake up and it's nearly NOON! Agh!

How am I supposed to do 12 hours of work today if I can't wake up??? Plus I can't stay up late to finish cause I need to get up at 7:30 tomorrow - I'm trying to creep my wake up time down gradually to the miserable 6am I have to get up at to make it to the exam both days.

And while I'm on the subject, why the hell do they have to start the exam at 8:30 both days? We get out at 4! Why can't they start it at 10:30 and let us out at 6???

Plus now I have to waste at least half an hour to go buy flashcards #701-900. And if they think I'm going to wash my hair or look like a decent human being when I walk into that drugstore, they've got another thing coming. They're getting lipstick and clothes that cover my alltogether, and that's it.

Prayer for Relief

I would like to formally ask the Bar Exam Gods to not test Mass Civ Pro this time. You tested it twice last summer, so I would like for one of those to please count as the one I was supposed to get. If that's too much, maybe it could just be a halvsies question where they ask if the Tort victim's motion for summary judgment should be granted.

I would also like for the question with the Consumer Protection part to be extremely obvious, because I never think of it. Actually, if all the combined questions could be really obvious, that would be great.

I would also like, in the following order:

1. Wills (without Trusts)
2. Crim Law (without Crim Pro)
3. Domestic Relations (without Wills)
4. Torts, but the traditional kind, not the awful government kind
5. I know there has to be at least one Contracts question, but please make it short and not too boring. No manufacturing fact patterns please, esp. no widgets or computers.
6. Evidence is fine, and can be combined with Professional Responsibility and Crim Pro, if necessary, especially if the question is broken down into several manageable chunks.
7. Maybe a Contracts/Real Property question with a really easy, obvious answer - like "No, she does not have to buy the land since seller knew it was actually covered in toxic waste"
8. Con Law is ok as long as it's either Free Speech, or Equal Protection, and only Federal law applies.
9. I know that despite how nicely I asked above, I will be cursed with Civ Pro, so how about a nice Class Action suit?
10. Partnership/Agency - preferably the exact question the BarBri guy said he thought it would be

Now, I feel like I'm being reasonable here and not asking you to not test any of the things I hate (except Civ Pro - please!!) so I think it would show your good faith if you could go ahead and just stick to the subjects and combinations I've asked for.

As consideration, I am prepared to climb up a mountain and sacrifice a peppercorn to honor Your Holy Perversity just as soon as I get a chance. I've got to go up there anyway about that goat thing from when I took the GRE...

Thanks.

I Quit

Boyfriend decided to invite Little Brother Who Just Graduated From College over for dinner last night. I was not amused. So instead of learning Commercial Paper, Agency, and Partnership, I cooked and cleaned. I can't just not clean when someone is coming over. It's part of my DNA. Anyway, I couldn't be too mad cause it was all just a ploy to get him over here, get him drunk, then wake him up at 6am to go help build our house. Which is what they're off doing right now. Heh.

So yeah, I'm a sucker for the booze, and I totally *meant* to just eat dinner and then go back and study. But I'm also a total unbelievable lightweight at this point, so I had one glass of wine at dinner and was half in the bag. Followed by, like, four more glasses, two beers, a trip to the local bar (where I won a pint glass - yay! free!) a quick stumble home at something embarrassing like 11, and then, because LBWJGFC likes to stay up till 4am and has the tolerance of a draft horse, two quick rounds of some drinking game where Boyfriend and I conspired against him until he crawled off to the living room and passed out.

The Verdict: If that is what being done with the bar exam will be like, being done with the bar exam will be much more fun that studying for the bar. Write that down so you don't forget.

The Dicta: I think that Chaser stuff really works. I feel awesome. There's still time for you to order some before the end of your bar exam. Just make sure you get the one with the charcoal and not the homeopathic one for wine.

Common Law Arson Review

Let us assume that I have a habit in the morning of picking up the teakettle with a dishtowel (because it is all metal and gets very hot) and then recklessly flinging said towel onto the burners afterwards. Of course we can also assume that my apartment has shitty appliances, including the semi-functional stove, which requires that you first light the back left burner before any of the other burners will light.

Let us assume that I went to make my thai noodle packet/massive sodium infusion for lunch, and that I failed to notice the dishtowel lying on top of the back left burner when I turned it on because I have been studying Property and not Crim Law or Torts (which both make me very paranoid that I am about to be maimed in some way).

Now, IF the towel is only scorched, I am clearly not guilty of common law arson. But what if the towel is actually charred (e.g., little black chunks can be scraped off with one's hypothetical fingernail)? What then, my pretties? What then?

(a) not arson unless my boyfriend notices when he gets home
(b) arson, if and only if it was my boyfriend's towel, since only his name is on the lease
(c) not arson, unless the towel matched the stove really well
(d) arson if I was subconciously trying to commit suicide by burning the apartment down

Dirty Whore

Today was my day to do the 100 MBE questions BarBri prescribed for yesterday. For my celebratory reward upon finishing I decided to take a shower and change my clothes. That got me thinking - just when was the last time I took a shower or changed my clothes?

I'm sure you're all dying to know, but I'm embarassed to say. I'll give some kind of valueless reward to the first person who can guess what a filthy skank I actually am by telling me when that last time was. Bonus if you can guess what I've been wearing.

Brain Like a Sieve

Someone tell me why Massachusetts has 10 essays please. Because I don't understand. Exactly one week from now I'll be quietly sobbing and beginning essay #4. If I had graduated last year like I was supposed to (instead of taking a year off to persue my Bridget Jones fantasies) essay #4 would have been my first of TWO Civ Pro essays. So I obviously would have failed. We need a 4.8/7 average on the essays. My BarBri practice essays ranged from two astonishingly bad 2.75s for Torts and Con Law to a maximum of 5 3/4 for Wills (perhaps due to a morbid fascination with death brought on by extended suffering.) That, clearly, is not passing.

I have also caught insomnia, which is clearly a contagious virus capable of being spread over the internet. It causes me to begin to panic at 9 (omigod i'm too tired to study anymore but i'm too wide awake to sleep!), stay up watching tv and drinking 3/4 of a bottle of wine till 2am (maybe if i trick my brain into thinking it's all over already it will go to sleep), lie in bed wide awake worrying about all the studying I need to do the next day (if i wake up at 6am and study till 2am, I can make up for the last two months in just four days!), and, when I finally do fall asleep, dream that I am studying Civ Pro.

And of course then the next day I feel like arse cupcakes and don't want to study. And why should I want to when I Don't Retain Anything???

$$$

I got my tax refund yesterday for $400, thanks to my new BFF, the Earned Income Credit. God I love tax. I so wish it were on the bar exam. Before you say I'm crazy, wouldn't you rather be learning how to deduct your new swimming pool as a medical expense than, oh, say, anything to do with Property? Or that coming down the chimney is a constructive breaking & entering? Or whether Congress can regulate wildflowers on Federal land? Sure you would. Anyway, this is fabulous timing since my post-exam plan was already to spend two days at the Indian Casinos. I'm gonna double that refund in the slots and buy me up some crap I don't need! Weehaw poverty!

F* You Too, Blue Book!

So I have some vague recollection from the 6-day that the PMBR people may have said that we should switch to the Blue Book in July and that the questions were harder. Something like that. That was two months ago, back when I didn't realize I had to write things down or lose them forever.

Anyway, I finally broke that sucker out over the weekend and it sucks monkey butts! While I do enjoy that they give explanations for all the answers (unlike in the red book where it's like "A is the correct answer, therefore B, C, and D are clearly wrong" - Thanks buddy! That's what I paid my $900 to read!), the freaking questions do NOT make sense! Like there was some Con Law question about subject matter jurisdiction, but then all the answer choices had to do with the 11th Amendment. WTF???

I don't have time to spend five minutes per question trying to figure out what precise variety of crack these fools were smoking when they wrote this book, so it's getting banished to the bottom of my neighbor's diaper pail and I'm going back to the wholesome reality of the Red Book.

In other news, check out my Ebay listing: PMBR Blue Book for sale - barely used - great value! - slight smell

Anyhoo

After slogging through Civ Pro for three miserable days, everything else seems positively easy. I got through all of Federal Jurisdiction with a mild feeling of "I can remember this" in just four hours. Could be because the Federal Rules don't involve as many stupid archaic details like:

"In order to file your complaint, you must thrice chase the chief justice 'round the court house, moving only widdershins. He shall be riding an ox and you may wear nothing but donkey skin gloves. If you can catch him, your complaint is filed. Otherwise you have 10 days to file by certified mail, return receipt requested."

That's the Mass rule, cross my heart and hope to die (before the 26th - please oh please).

Coming Up With A Title Is Too Stressful

I'm having such a crappy, crappy day. I've had a migraine on and off for about 48 hours, which is wholly incompatible with studying. Plus my boyfriend has been the biggest most unsupportive jerk about this whole bar study experience. He doesn’t understand such things as that:

#1. I can’t get up at 6am, start studying, and be done studying by the time he gets home from work because I don’t have a fixed amount of work to do - I have an endless amount of things to know

#2. I can’t get up at 6am, period, and that does not mean I'm lazy, it just means i'm not a construction worker or a farmhand

#3. Doing the dishes is not even on my secondary list of things to do now

#4. Neither is vacuuming.

#5. Neither is doing anything in the bedroom other than sleeping, frankly

#6. And speaking of sleeping, yes, even though I have all this work to do, I DO still have to sleep, otherwise I won’t remember anything, so YES, sleep IS a priority

#7. I also have to take study breaks sometimes, and just because I watch tv for 20 minutes while I eat dinner doesn’t mean I am actually watching tv all day long while he is gone

#8. Whatever stress he thinks he is under, it is all self imposed, and

#9. Not one thing he thinks he has to do (or that he thinks I have to do) has to be done before July 26 & 27 except me learning everything I need to know to pass this stupid awful test.

So yeah...crappy, crappy day.

AGH!!! DOOM!!!

Ok seriously. I am so totally screwed. I have about 150 flashcards for Civ Pro now. And I'm still not done. I haven't even gotten to Federal Jurisdiction yet. And did I learn anything while I made those flashcards? Oh my no. No, not at all. And I'll obviously never have time to meaningfully review them at this point. And I know the BarBri people said we shouldn't get all hung up on one subject and all that blahblahblah, but Civ Pro is #4 on the list of topic frequency for the essays and, as I already mentioned, they had TWO WHOLE ESSAYS on it last summer. Agggh!!!! Dooom!!!!!

I was reading somewhere that 95% of people from my school passed last summer. I don't see how that could possibly be true when this is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE.

And why the hell am I craving salt so badly? Is it something to do with brain function? Someone help me out here. I'm going to go lick bouillon cubes while I wait.

I Am So Screwed

I've been trying to learn Mass Civ Pro this morning, which has led me to realize that there is no possible way I can pass the bar exam. No Possible Way. Last summer they had TWO separate essays on Civil Procedure - not mixed with anything else, but just Civ Pro. And there are like 1000 things we are supposed to know! How the hell am I supposed to memorize all of that plus all of Federal Jurisdiction, which is obviously just as bad, in like one week??? That's over 2000 things PLUS all the other ridiculous awful crap they make us have to know. It's just not possible.

My Grandma called the other day and innocently asked how the studying was going and I started gurgling and crying incoherently about how awful it is, and do you know how hard it is to explain to your Grandma how much the bar exam sucks without swearing? It's really f-ing hard!

Things That Are Hard

I hope you're all enjoying learning your Russian days of the week. I have them set like that to remind me that there are things that are harder than the bar exam. Like learning Russian for instance. I've seen Russian grammar make grown men cry on multiple occasions, including a high ranking officer in the Air Force. I spent four miserable years getting my butt kicked by that language, including 4 months in Moscow in the dead of winter. That was hard. This bar exam stuff is just tedious and boring.

Dreams

I've been dreaming about the bar exam for seven weeks now. I always have weird, vivid dreams, but normally they're really involved and interesting, like the one where the Tasmanian Devil was trying to kill Santa Claus and I had to save Christmas by playing the guitar. My bar exam dreams, however, are not so interesting, but I guess they're still weird.

I had one dream where I was trying to figure out the Rule against Perpetuities (my arch enemy) and all of a sudden I realized that all I had to do was make the three floating cookies align. I was so happy. I was like omigod this is so easy! You just push them all up into a row and that's it! Why didn't I understand this before! Imagine my crushing disappointment when I woke up...

I also dreamed I was taking the MBE, but it graded itself as you went along, and every time I got a wrong answer these little tiny people on the page would be hanged. No pressure! So I was sitting there getting all the answers wrong and all the little people were crying and begging me to save them and I was sobbing about how stupid I am and killing them all.

Today is my last day of BarBri. Woohoo!

Eat Salt & Run

The stress is making everything I eat taste like sawdust. I also have an insane craving for salt. I wander around the kitchen about ten times a day looking for the saltiest thing possible. The only thing I like anymore is these Thai noodle soup packets, which, I noticed today, contain fully 44% of my daily allowance of sodium. Mmm... coronarilicious.

I've also been exercising like a fiend, not because I want to, but because I can hide from studying by pretending I'm doing something productive, like caring about my health. Clearly though, I do not care about my health, since I secretely wish I might suddenly be wiped from the earth within the next two weeks.

TWO WEEKS! AGGGHH!!!!!!

I'm not miscounting, I just dont count the 24th or 25th as viable days, because I assume I will be writhing on the floor sobbing incoherently about how I am doomed.

Accessorizing for Bar Examinees

Oh man that MBE review just about killed me. I suffered through possibly the longest hour of my life listening to this guy harp on useless crap and then speed through the stuff he prefaced with "now this is really important, so be sure you know it." I even sat slackjawed through five minutes of break before I realized I was free to go. Ugh. God.

In other news, we got our little BarBri ziplock baggies yesterday, which is very exciting. Apparently I was not the only person who squealed in delight when I was handed mine because the lady handing them out commented that the girls seemed disproportionately excited about the distribution. But I mean, hello, free purse - who's not going to get excited about that? That's why you always see people carrying around the free piece of crap they got for resubscribing to Marie Claire. And that BarBri bag is way more stylish than some of those. I'm thinking of this one in particular:


Hideous, non? And yet I'm still delighted every time I drag it out from under the bed to find one of the spare wires I keep in it, because it was FREE.

Now I've just got to figure out what footwear will best coordinate with my BarBri bag so I can be superstylish at the bar exam. I'm torn between empty shoeboxes and plastic grocery bags. The plastic bags are the obvoius choice, but I'm afraid they'd be too matchymatchy. This is going to take some further thought.

Over the Edge

Well I had my first really big nervous breakdown last night. I was a little on edge ever since I realized there were only 3 weeks to go from the 4th of July. But then last night I was watching Dancer in the Dark with the boyfriend (I stop studying at 8 to try to retain my sanity - clearly though, its not working) and at one point I was like "Omigod that is totally self defense!" But then he was like "No its not" at which point I flipped out and was all oh god oh god I'm going to fail the bar exam if I can't even tell what's self defense and what's not I'm doomed - DOOMED!!! And once I got a little under control from that, we finished watching the movie, and I sobbed for like the entire last half hour cause it's so freaking sad and awful.

So today I have a total crying hangover, complete with Internal Feelings of Vast Emptiness, and I'm too depressed to even try to study. Hopefully my Agency & Partnership lecture will cheer me up. Heh. Heheh. Ah...funny...

Abnormally Hazardous Activities

Ahh...the Fourth of July. I always intend to go watch the fireworks on the Esplanade, but then it's always so hot and gross out that I don't want to. I sent my boyfriend off on a boat to drink all day so I could study in peace. Or so I thought. The little neighbor children spent the day lighting firecrackers and throwing them, at the last possible moment, into their neighbor's clean laundry left out on the line. They are like 4, 5, and 8. I had my noise cancelling headphones on, rocking out to a steady soundtrack of white noise, to block out their parents' Loud Latin Dance Party BBQ, so I can't be sure I didn't just miss it, but I will assume from the lack of telltale wailing that no one lost an eye and/or finger. I pulled the shades up to watch, just in case, since clearly they were otherwise without adult supervision. Oh god though, what could ever possess you to hold a lit explosive in your hand for any amount of time? Or to allow your child to?? Didn't these people ever take Torts??? And failing that, didn't they take a warning from the three fingered guy who sold them their big sack of death just over the New Hampshire border, in the big yellow warehouse, 3 miles, on the left - buy one get one free!!!

Procrastination

On Saturday I drew up an extremely convoluted, detailed study schedules like one of those exercise plans you always make and never even start (e.g., I will wake up at 6am every day and run 20 miles, thereby losing 20lbs per week until I reach a state of antimatter and become a black hole, all in time for bikini season.) I stopped making the exercise plans when I was about 14, but I have this eternal well of optimism about study plans. Back in law school, I would make study plans twice a week that at the beginning of the semester would go something like:

Monday - Read all cases for Tuesday, brief cases, read commercial outline, brief commercial outline, begin researching paper due at the end of the semester, go to gym for one hour (ok so I haven't given up completely)

Then getting towards finals it would be like:

Thursday - makeup reading (500 pages per class), brief cases from makeup reading (approx 60 hours), brief new cases (1 hour), outline all four classes (100 hours), begin researching paper due on Friday (10 hours), outline paper (5 hours), write & edit paper (24 hours), go to gym + makeup gym (100 hours)

Of course I'd be writing that out on Wednesday, because I didn't feel like doing any actual work on Wednesday, but clearly on Thursday I'd feel like starting all the crap I'd been putting off for the entire semester.

I feel that perhaps this is not an appropriate method for preparing for the bar. As evidence, I just tried to do a Con Law essay (for those of you following along at home, it was #20) where I only saw 1 out of 7 issues. Argh!!! Doom!!!

Shame

Back in the day I used to be able to drink my own weight in beer, get up the next morning at six am, and start drinking again. At least that's what I'm told. But recently, I've been getting hungover from literally just one drink. And not even the next day, but like twenty minutes later. So I became obsessed with those ads for that Chaser stuff and finally broke down a few weeks ago and decided to try it. The catch was that they don't actually sell it anywhere. I skulked around three different pharmacies by myself trying to find it, unsuccessfully, and then finally dragged a friend along with me, who I forced to talk to the clerks for me to ask whether they had it. They did not, and they looked at us like we must be total degenerate alcoholic prostitutes for asking. ("Look Sharelle, I think I see track marks on the tall one's arms!") Eventually I realized I could just buy it online and ordered it at drugstore.com. Even online though, you don't escape being judged. When you add it to your shopping cart, it helpfully suggests that you may also be interested in purchasing a Clearblue Easy Earliest Results Pregnancy Test 2 pack and a box of Mucinex. Dammit, just because I want to go out and drink to excess with no consequences doesn't mean I'm a runny-nosed whore!